The most up-to-date official GNU stuff is normally kept on prep.ai.mit.edu and is available for anonymous FTP in the pub/gnu directory. See the files etc/DISTRIB and etc/FTP for more information. (To get copies of these files, see section What informational files are available for GNU Emacs?.)
The following sites are all mirror images of the GNU distribution area:
/prep.ai.mit.edu:pub/gnu/ /ftp.uu.net:packages/gnu/ /src.doc.ic.ac.uk:gnu/ (available via FTP, NIFTP, FTAM) /ftp.win.tue.nl:pub/gnu/ /utsun.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp:ftpsync/prep/ /nic.funet.fi:pub/gnu/
The directory at ftp.uu.net is a mirror of prep.ai.mit.edu:pub/gnu, except that files larger than 1 megabyte {right?} are automatically split into multiple parts. If you have trouble transferring large files, you should try here. A file normally named `XXX' is split into files XXX-split/part[0-9][0-9], and there will be a file named XXX-split/README which contains the list of parts (especially helpful when FTP-ing by e-mail), their checksums, and reassembly instructions. Some of the other mirror sites may have the same property. {Can someone check this out? Thanks!}
Information was provided by Lee McLoughlin <lmjm@doc.ic.ac.uk>, Jonathan R. Ferro <jf41+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>, Arjan de Vet <devet@win.tue.nl>, and Simon Marshall <S.Marshall@sequent.cc.hull.ac.uk>.